🏀 KuBuckets Archive

@jaybate-1.0 said:

@ParisHawk

Um, its like what Heathcote ran at MSU with Magic's team.

Its called a half court, or 3/4s of half court, match-up 1-3-1, Greg. They may not have carried MSU games to you in the Carolinas back in those days, Greg. Maybe you should get a kinescope, eh?

And calling Bill Self!

This zone works.

It is who we are, when we are this flipping challenged in front court.

Never, never, never, never, ever, ever, ever, let our front court guys play opponent straight up....EVER!.

It is a horrible habit for these guys to get into when they lay against weak teams.

Our KU bigs cannot guard L&S bigs straight up, so that is NOT who we are.

We are a bunch of leathernecks that don't play fair; that mass force wherever needed; that NEVER take on opponents one on one, unless all of the artillery and tanks have been destroyed, and unless all of the flame throwers and satchel charges are expended.

Our goal from here on should be for Perry Ellis (and all the rest of the bigs too) to NEVER guard ANY big without a double in m2m, or a collapse in a zone.

1-3-1 match-up zone 70% of the time with the other 30% of the time unexpected switches to 3/4 court 2-2-1 pressing falling back into m2m.

And on offense....

Artillery, artillery, artillery until their defenses crack and then Oubre putting it on the deck to iron, with The Big Red Dog sticking back.

Someone please, for the love of all that is holy, copy and paste this onto a memo for Coach Self!!! He needs to see this and make it happen.

@jaybate-1.0 Ahhhhh, all fiction no malice? ;) Sounds to me like a full on bashing of the OAD hype that has degraded the college game.
Couple questions. Josh is Josh Selby yah? Did he really play in a boot? I forgot about that.
And, the robots. I imagine that they are the cyborg type, with skin and hair and subcutaneous tissues. Not like the robots on Star Wars or I-Robot. Although, those I-Robot things could dominate!
Couple extra comments, Frank Mason is a STUD. He is our best player right now. I read your post earlier about that whole changing defenses and stuff. Mix the 1-3-1 up and press it to 3/4 court, then go back to man, basically keep the other teams coach guessing what is next. I think its brilliant and I truly wish Coach Self would embrace some unpredictability into his schemes!!! We have to admit that he has given KU what Ole Roy couldnt and done it faster. He is a hall of fame coach to be sure. What on earth keeps him from straying from his norm? Its maddening! Mix it up on D to keep the other team off balance. Use our 5 perimeter guys to bomb the beaches of normandy until the opposing defense is so shell shocked, then you drive that effing ball right up their arses.

@REHawk We've got how many games left til conference play? 3? I wonder who will come into the conference playing better and who will come into The Dog house. Greene is a great shooter, we need him on the offensive side. Oubre can be a great shooter but his quick hands to create steals and his D are his strong points so far I think. Perry doesnt deserve to start until he proves he can play ball again. HIs last two games have been horrible.... I think Cliff starts up front with Traylor. Then your first three.

@approxinfinity well said Approx

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.
I hope your day is filled with lots of good and love
and of course lots of Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

@JayHawkFanToo They always rebound from any loss. Very very rarely do we see a KU team lose two or 3 in a row. It just doesnt happen. Hasnt for decades

@DoubleDD yeah, Happy Holidays everyone.

@Shanghai_RCJH said:

Maybe HCBS saw UNLV looming at a home date and need a wake up call for his team before they feel too good about themselves.

Good point. They did just beat a very good Arizona team AT their place. If they can beat Arizona, they could throttle KU!

Jingle bells, Perry smells, KU laid an egg, the hawk mobile lost its wheels and joker got away!

@drgnslayr I waited for a whole day to respond. For various reasons of course. But, KU did not come to play last night at all. Frank was the only guy out there on the court for KU as far as Im concerned. Yes he made his mistakes on D, but over all he was the only player on the court that came out ready to play for KU. Perry might as well have stayed in Lawrence. Landon and Traylor and Greene too. NONE of our bigs came to play and be competitive. NONE.
Is that on Coach Self and him alone?
Ultimately yes it is. He is in charge. But, I find it hard to believe that he did not try his best to prepare his guys for Temple with less than 24 hrs of prep time. They played saturday, probly traveled to Philly the day after or the day of. They got time to review tape and practice the day before maybe and the day of a little bit. Then ALL of KU's players just gave zero effort. I saw during time outs how Bill almost popped a cerebral artery trying to get his guys in the game. I dont believe he didnt try. I just dont. But, again, yes ultimately it is on him how bad KU got beat yesterday. I hope he ripped into his guys for how badly they played. I hope he makes them run every step in AFH 3 times over for how bad they played. I hope he makes them shoot 150 FT's for every missed FT and field goal. I hope he makes them get up at 6 am for a beat down boot camp style.
And who knows, maybe this will open his eyes. Maybe this beat down will tell him, hey we need to quit trying to play inside out and play to this teams strengths. But, clearly they did not have any strengths at all against Temple last night.
I saw the whole game. Again, I am not a basketball coach or x player or anything. But even my laymans knowledge of the game can tell when a team has no toughness. Only Frank came to play last night.

I was watching the game on ESPN 3 yesterday cuz it was not aired on tv where I am. I had to refresh the feed a couple times and one time I did and it opened with Cliff on the ground holding his ankle. Is he ok? I havent read anything about it in the post KU sports stuff. What happened to him?

@wrwlumpy said:

thing of beauty

@wrwlumpy WOW!! Bob Knight!! That video was in 2011 and Im certain this still applies today. Calipari has ZERO integrity. Lets his players skate by with no classes the second semester. I wonder if that is a recruiting point for him. Hey, come play for me for a year, you only have to skate by one half the semester with a C average and then you can make your millions as a lottery pick next year. I have very ill feelings toward Cal.

Thanks Drgn! That was a good post game analysis. Much better than some of those guys at bleacher or yahoosports. If I may, Id like to offer my own perspective and some questions.

@drgnslayr said:

Our game with Lafayette was entertaining. We got to enjoy some good 3pt shooting, some players that don't usually run the show ran the show, and it was (for the most part) an upbeat game during the holiday season.

We can easily become delusional from some of the events of this game. Lafayette is not on the national radar screen and few even know where they come from. However... there were plenty of nice outcomes to this game that were unexpected. And as we all like to deflate this victory because of the opponent, we should also make note of the time of year it was played in, and how games around Christmas time can often be dictated by distractions away from the game.
Most definitely distractions happen during the holiday season for our boys. I believe it was a couple years ago, I think it was Tennessee at home, We should have won that game, they were short because of injuries and our guys came out not ready to play and got beat.

Here are my takeaways from this game:

1. Frank Mason continues to improve. We all know he has skills and packs a lot of athleticism in his mole-build body. Frank has been lighting it up from 3, and he often comes through with a big basket when the team needs a big basket. That is certainly a part of leadership. He is converting from volume scorer to team facilitator. He can only improve, and I see this guy earning plenty of national recognition by his senior year. We are fortunate to have him!

I keep saying that Frank reminds me of Sherron. Not exactly the same player by any means but his grit, his toughness and fearlessness to me are nearly identical. Frank is proving to be just as good a shooter as Sherron was and his passing skills are improving. But again by no means a clone of Sherron at this point in Franks career. We are lucky to have him! I really hope Devonte' heals quickly and can return this year. I guess we will find out soon if he gets a rouge smoking jacket, right?

1. Kelly Oubre continues to improve. I really thought the wraps would come off of his game after Christmas... after all the heavy Christmas season practices, but I guess Kelly couldn't wait that long. Gone are the cobwebs, and those that were way too critical about his first moments as a Jayhawk.

How did Kelly do on Defense? The game still goes too fast for me to pick out everyones defensive deficiencies. Kelly seemed to be active on D and have very quick hands. I think he picked a couple pockets that he didnt get credit for cuz he poked the ball out and someone else came away with it. This kid should lead us in steals soon. I really hope he doesn't declare for the draft after this season.

1. Hunter Mickelson finally steps out of the shadows. The guy we saw in this game was the guy Self (and most of us) thought he would become at Kansas. The key for getting more production from Hunter is to keep giving him some minutes. Without those minutes he'll rust away like the Titanic.

Hunter was awesome! I hope he continues to do what he did. Especially when we play some bigger bigs this season.

1. Perry Ellis doesn't stay hydrated. That is my conclusion after reading the comments made about his lackluster performance. Flu-like symptoms from guys who don't have the flu are typically caused by lack of hydration. He even mentioned it himself. He may be one of those guys that hates to drink water. Pity if it is true. There is no way a guy his size and athletic ability can play that many minutes and produce so little. His energy was zero. Perry should drink plenty of water an hour before game time, and even better, some watermelon juice. And then eat a banana, for potassium and slow-releasing sugars to energize him for 40 minutes of basketball.

Our trainers can force, ok well not force, but strongly suggest hydration to Perry during pre game and on. IV fluids, Gatorade, whatever. Maybe the student section can bring big giant bobble heads of Perry drinking a bottle of something.

1. BamBam Traylor continues to play harder after his late night antics. Maybe he needs to make the same mistake in March! (joke)

Yeah, Joke but not really joke cuz you are right, we will need super Traylor in March.

1. Svi's extra practice on his trey after practice is paying off. He's going to continue to improve and give us some nice minutes off the bench.

I knew the lid would come off for Svi some time. I believe I said as much just the other day!
Watching him drop 3 treys in a row, I almost thought that he was gonna break Brannens total makes in a game for a minute
7. Wayne Selden continues to be unselfish. He remains focused on doing more than scoring, and he's one of our key glue guys because of it. 6 assists from the 2? Are you kidding me?

Yeah, Selden is a beast. He also had a double clutch dunk that I thought was awesome! See guys he still can get up. I will concede though, that he probly has lost some of his pop but I dont think its as bad as we thought, maybe? the 6 asst from 2guard doesn't surprize me, He has to be our primary back up PG. He took a seat about 6 min into the first half so he could spell Frank at PG. At least I think thats what happened.

1. Cliff Alexander continues to show us he is a work in progress. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will his offense be. He definitely is not a OAD, and I think we can start realizing that and build recruiting around him staying.

Cliff is also a beast, I hope he sticks around for another season too. Also, I hope he continues to play this way against the footers we will see in the not too distant future.

1. Brannen Greene better treat practice schedules as important as PT because the relationship has now been made obvious.

Yep, Brannen probly slept in or got himself a lil girly friend. That boy needs to keep his head on straight. Not take lessons from Jam Tray.

1. Landen Lucas, with all of his solid fundamentals, will have to fight harder if he wants to stay in the discussion for PT.

Self hinted at using a different line up of our 5 bigs each game. I mean, I think he wants to use 4 of the 5 but different every game. Wonder if he continues that trend into the conference based on match ups and practices.

Self said it was a great week of practice, and it showed in many areas... mostly on offense. Our defense continually had many issues. Guys didn't make switches, and spacing was just down right horrible. We were fortunate that Lafayette didn't capitalize more on their 46.2% shooting from trey.

I know right!? How do we let a team shoot 46% in AFH!? I know our guys can defend better than that. Why did they have so many problems? It could have been a much bigger win and KU could have broke the century mark.
The difference in this game was rebounding. We owned 20 more rebounds, and those possessions gave us a margin to own the score card. If the Leopards had a footer in the paint, this game would have been a lot closer than it was.

It seems that all of us are "in" for making this a banner year for 3pt shooting. It is clear we need to make the emphasis on the perimeter. I think we should spend some practice time developing the secondary break open trey opportunities. Taking the trey shot on a secondary break offers many opportunities, including hitting a wide open trey, and a 50/50 chance at an offensive rebound (once we train our guys to focus on it). It is hard to come up with a better opportunity than that!

Now.... on to Temple!

Yes! Monday night game! Temple should be a good test for us. Another away game.

@HighEliteMajor Word

@jaybate-1.0 Indeed he did and I hope it continues. Especially if what you said proves true that KU got X'ed off one of our 5 star big targets

@bskeet Man thats a heck of a thought! Its no secret that any KU fan would like to see Manning coach KU. But, The Truth? I think that would be just as cool. He has ties to both coasts though too, if I'm not mistaken. I know his KU ties are deep as well. But, what if? Yah, thats cool.

@VailHawk Yeah, I meant that too. College basketball in general. But then, are we all ok with that concept? Kentucky is ruining college ball right now by stacking. For us to remain competitive, KU would have to theoretically do the same thing, if they can. Would we all be ok with that? I mean its going to be like pro sports in a way. You have teams like the NY yankees with tons and tons of money for all the best players (that really didn't work out for them this year) or heck I dont even follow baseball or football well enough to compare but I hope my point is getting across. Because Im trying to echo what @jaybate-1.0 is saying.

@jaybate-1.0 HA! I fully agree Jaybate. Especially if we want to sweep Texas and/or Iowa State this year. We need Perry's trey gun. Would you accept 38%, 37.5%? Maybe you should also consider joining a Buddhist or Hindu temple to cover all the spiritual bases. ;)

@jaybate-1.0 Perry shot the trey pretty good last year. Granted it was in a small sample size. But I think Perry's numbers from 3 will get better. I can feel it.

@drgnslayr HA! Thats hilarious!

@jaybate-1.0 light years before the NCAA figures out that there should be rules set in place to manage the talent stacking there should be some fighting fire with fire going on and I want KU to remain at the top of the conference for the foreseeable future.

@JayHawkFanToo If Wisconsin, Duke, Kentucky and Arizona all win their conference titles, they could all be the #1 seeds and make that final four happen again. It is very possible that could happen again this year.

@wissoxfan83 "Our worst nightmare would be it comes down to Kentucky-Duke and they have another 1992 Christian Laetner type ending. We'd never hear the end of it, the greatest shot over part 2 or whatever."
Yeah, disdain for Kentucky is an understatement from my perspective. I truly hate them. the whole lot of them.
Dude, if that game actually happens, I hope Duke wins exactly like that. Just rip the fracking heart right out of coach Cal's chest and eat it right there on the court.

@drgnslayr Couldnt have said it better myself. Although, Duke has 9 Mickey D's of their own. Im not certain it was coach K's goal to get that many. It just happened to work out like that. Cal? Oh yah, I think he had this game plan all along. I think he wanted to get his stacked team in place all the way back in 08 when KU beat him and his then "dream team." It seems to me that the obvious final four teams this year will be Arizona, Wisconsin, Duke and Kentucky. If that comes to pass, I hope Wisconsin wins it all.

@HighEliteMajor Thanks HEM for that teaching moment. Im a sponge and I rely on you more experienced fellows for teaching. Thanks.

@jaybate-1.0 Ok, two questions. One, what is a fade curl? Im still trying to learn bball terminology and recognize plays live in game. And, by Dwayne Johnson, I assume you mean aka The Rock?
Another great post dude. It gets me "amped" That first half of the Utah game!? Sick. I wonder though, why couldnt they reproduce that in the second half? Did they just get complacent with a 20pt lead? Or did Self purposely tell them, stop running perimeter action, were gonna try to pound it inside, the lead be damned?

@jaybate-1.0 Once again, great analogy. Its true. The Marines are trained to say yes sir and just go do it. Me being X Navy, its not much different other than I spent most of my time below the middeck of the ship. Im actually glad that our boys got at least 2 days exposure to the military way. It will give them and has given them strength and the necessary intestinal fortitude to just get things done no matter what. No questions asked. I wonder though, why not use Ellis as an emergency PG option? Is Traylor a better ball handler than Ellis? At least Perry can shoot the treys pretty good. Speculatively, Mason grabs the rebound and in bounds it to Ellis who brings it up to initiate. The defense is set before he gets up court and there really aren't many options to chose from in his limited exp with being a 1 guard. The D sags off him to clog the paint that almost certainly will get driven into and Perry just calmly drains a 3 from the top of the key or the right wing where his sweet spots are.

@DoubleDD Good post. I think we have all seen things from KU this season that make us excited and scared at the same time. Biggest problem IMO is youth. We only have 2 juniors getting meaningful minutes, well 3 if you count redshirt soph Lucas. Youth is our achilles again this season. They can win the big 12 again and they can make a deep run in the NCAAs but it depends on how quickly all that youth can get consistent and "get" what Self is trying to teach them. Oh, and if Self can allow them to play to their strengths and not force them to play to what they are not.

PS. Die hard Jayhawk fan here, not going to bail on them if they dont win any titles this season.

@DoubleDD said:

@KUSTEVE

I couldn't agree more. Devonte is, is, is, well a stud. The boy can play.

I second that!! Let us all send our positive thoughts Devonte's way and hope he heals fast.

@joeloveshawks said:

Greene, Svi, Selden, Mason, Oubre...all of these guys can shoot and should be the focus

Exactly! Since when have we had 5 guys on one team that can shoot 40% or better from 3pt land?? I know, Svi hasn't proven himself there yet but he can and will. You did forget about Perry though. He can drop some treys down and spread out offenses. Coach Self said he wanted to open up driving lanes? Thats a real good way. Having 4 starters out there who can bomb from long range.

@JhawkAlum What? Im notta girl!

Welcome, very much welcome! I have a favor to ask. Call me a jerk or whatever, this is mostly said in jest. But, would you please fix your profile icons with a personalized photo of some kind? Doesnt have to be an actual photo of yourself. Just please make it something other than the quilty doily patters on the default. Bcuz lets be honest. They kinda suck. No offense people.

@HighEliteMajor @wrwlumpy, Kind of like when Rush was out for the first few games of his last season here. Got our bench players to step up to the next level

@wissoxfan83 Thats what Im sayin too man. All our boys could be back next season.

@jaybate-1.0 I just hope, and this might be selfish of me, but I hope that Selden, Cliff and Oubre come back next season. That order of magnitude will be realized.

@joeloveshawks Ehhh, Maybe Self meant to play Manning in garbage time minutes off the bench in the second half with his team up by 18 with 3 minutes left. Clearly that did not happen.

@BeddieKU23 At this point in the season I am starting to think that all our guys should be back next season. Cliff, Kelly, Wayne, all of them. I agree, they are very clearly a tougher team this year. But, I also agree they are really good at stinking it up. I hope hope hope Coach Self wakes up, realizes he needs to play to this teams strengths. Which are soooo not inside/out at this point. I mean I've only been really paying attention to the rules of the game and how it is played since the 07 08 season. I'm not even a pawn in terms of basketball knowledge and even I know this team needs to play more like an Iowa state than a typical KU team.

@HighEliteMajor Absolutely Svi can spell Mason at PG. But, he had an awful game the other day. Being 17, consistency will be an issue until he learns more of Self's methods.

@jaybate-1.0 Dig it! Nice analogy. Now if our boys can just figure out how to score on L&A's with consistency. They might just make a deep tourney run in March.
Question on Selden. I wonder if his knee injury really did take some of his hops away. In the latest game he did not appear to be wearing a brace of any kind, however two times he has tried to dunk and two times he has failed. Makes one suspect doesnt it?

@JhawkAlum Way to call it man.

Thats all I got.

@wissoxfan83 I also think its way cool that Drew and Paul are playing on the same team.

@wissoxfan83 Hey thanks for the NBA Jayhawks updates! Thats good stuff. Its awesome to see our boys do so well in the big leagues. I really hope Wigs gets rookie of the year. Then next year I hope JOJO gets it

@nuleafjhawk ah, gotcha.

@nuleafjhawk Wait, I thought Bowen was going to stay and work with Beaty.

@wrwlumpy My quick take on the game. Ever since KU lost to I cannot recall which team it was in 09 or 10. I have been more nervous about games at the Sprint Center. I dont know what it is but the obvious presence of the mass of KU faithful doesnt seem to give KU an advantage there. Utah is obviously a very good team. Our boys will have to hit them first and hit them hard. Take it right to their footer, his blocks be dammed. Foul him up and foul him cuz he cant shoot his Frees. Mason and Selden are going to have to lock down Utah's PG and the whole team is going to have to do their best to deny the kickout for the open 3 cuz those guys can shoot it.

@wrwlumpy I like Holly Rowe, I think she is great, far from another bimbo. But, Erin Andrews Ohhhhhhhh yah.

@JayHawkFanToo LOL! What does @jaybate-1.0 say? Howling!

@jaybate-1.0 Ahhh, the Stradivarius. Red Violin, great movie.